Cooperativa Ixel

Today, we went to a Cooperativa called Cooperativa Ixel in San Antonio Aguas Calientes. It is an indigenous women´s coop that makes and sells indigenous things such as sutes, table covers, etc.

Ixel means Mayan goddess - the mother of the work of the waist or mother of the rainbow, I think.

The ladies at the coop were very nice. They told us a the story of the sute and then asked for some volunteers to come up and dress up in indigenous garb and had a wedding. I took pictures.

Sutes - these are handmade cloths with designs on both sides. Good ones take them a year to make them by hand. Women wear/wore these for church or for parties. They wore them on their heads for church or their forearm for a fiesta. Single señoritas wore them on a shoulder, married women had them on their forearm. They can use these cloths to carry stuff on their heads or even to carry a baby (sorry I didn´t take a picture of this, but this is very common in Guatemala). The colors on all indigenous stuff mean something too. Green means achieving success. Black means war, because they still remember the days of the war and they still remember it. Red means blood, celeste (light blue) means the sky, blue means sacrifice, orange means corn plants, and violeta means the sea. There are some other colors I don´t know the translation for that come from the rainbow.

The story of the SUTE

Here is a direct translation of the story of the sute she told us (or close to it). Anyways, a long time ago, when a guy liked a single girl, all he had to do was take her sute off her shoulder (single women wear it on their shoulder) and that would signify he wanted to marry her. Then she would say no, and the guy would say yes, and this would go on for awhile. Then both families would meet and the girl´s parents would say no, and the guy´s parents would say yes, and this would go on for awhile. The girl´s parents would say we don´t like the guy, and the guy´s parents would say this is tradition, and we don´t want to lose our tradition. The girl´s family would finally agree and they would get married. I think she said this might have happened until 2 generations ago.

The lady at the coop asked for 3 girls and one guy to come up and try on some indigenous clothing. The guy and the girl got married, and the other two girls acted as mothers of the bride and groom. The couple that volunteered to go up there are already married, so no harm was done.

I bought a table cover, 3 hackey sacks (to practice my juggling), and 2 necklaces they had there. Everything they had there were of pretty good quality.

Check out the pictures under COOPERATIVA IXEL.